You Take My Breath Away....

OK fine, it´s a lame title, but seriously, Huaraz literally takes your breath away at a neat 3,090 meters above sea level. You´ve occasionally witnessed the little ear popping phenomenon on a flight and you´ve climbed a few little mountains. You´ve read about altitude sickness in travel books and scoffed at all the apparent exaggeration. Then, just to be on the safe side, you´ve dished out the money for the little pills, all the while thinking you probably won´t need them since you´re pretty invincible. It´s time to come down to earth when you suddenly land somewhere so high and even going up 15 steps to your hostel room leaves you panting.

It took us about 2 days to overcome the nausea, headache and zombie feeling after arriving at Huaraz. This is a little city in the north of Peru which sits at the bottom of a gorgeous part of the Andes. The snow capped mountain range on one side of the valley is called the Cordillera Blanca and the range on the other side Cordillera Negra, ie the black mountain range, named thus due to the lack of snow on the mountain peaks. Huaraz itself isn´t particularly charming, but the multitude of treks and trips around it more than make up for this.

Deciding to play it safe on the first day, we pick a ¨cultural¨ trip, namely a visit to the archeological ruins of Chavin. It starts off with a visit to one of the many beautiful lagoons in this mountainous area, called Querococha. It`s literally right by the highway, as can be seen in the picture. Tourists beware-authentic Peruvian women clad in traditional clothes are ready to have their pictures taken with you for a fee, the little lamb in their arms making this opportunity all the more irresistible!

Seriously, does anybody ever buy this ridiculously obvious ploy?? And what a boring job that must be-stand on the side of the road and pounce on unsuspecting tourists the minute they step out of the bus. This is only the first of many other depressing jobs we will encounter during our trip. One cute moment of the visit to the lagoon was the following attempt to join our group right before we left:

I promise, no one staged that one!

The ruins at Chavin are apparently remnants of a temple from Pre Inka times. I found it difficult to understand the guide and she had appalling English so I didn´t retain too much information from the trip. Apparenly it was a very important place for its time and dignitaries from all over came annually to offer offerings and participate at other religious ceremonies. One interesting mystery proved to be not too mysterious after all-there were ridiculously high stairs leading to some underground tunnels and sleeping quarters, but the doors leading to them were so short that even I had to kneel to get in. I was beginning to imagine some very weirdly proportioned ancient people when the guide pointed out that the doors were made only recently, for visitors to the site.

I was a lot more interested in the little village by the ruins-the nearest we`ve come to seeing authentic Peru so far:

Seeing as it was right before Shabbat and we were still a little dizzy, we decided to leave all hiking related activities to the following week. After a brief few hours of resistance I gave in to ¨peer¨ pressure and signed up for a wall climbing trip on Friday. Here is a picture of me looking all cool:

It does not reflect my feelings for the whole experience!! It was a breeze going down the wall, but I had a really rough time climbing it back up. Granted it was not particularly high and the guide was standing at the bottom holding the security rope, but that didn´t mean that I suddenly grew an extra few inches, which is all I needed. You see, there ARE places among the rocks where you are supposed to place your hands and feet, but what about short people who cannot reach these little nooks without completely overexerting themselves??? My arms were killing me by the time I made it halfway up and at some point it even felt like I couldn´t finish the climb cause I just couldn´t reach the next nook and kept falling back to the previous one when I tried. Way to go on a vacation to take a break from hard work!

Thinking I had no other choice (since we have to go back to Huaraz from the top of the wall where we came from, right? right???) I somehow made it to the top, when the guide at the bottom of the wall declared ¨OK, I´m pulling you down¨! What???? Turns out we were supposed to climb up and down the wall until we get bored and get back to Huaraz from the BOTTOM of the wall. So, really, there was no need to finish the climb... The day wasn´t completely wihout its merits though. I managed to have a whole conversation in Spanish with our guide Luis while Rikki (the tall and experienced, grrr) had her turn. He told me about his jealous Swiss girlfriend who left him to go back home and about how difficult it is for a guide to find love. He waxed poetic about the power of the heart and complained bitterly about tourists not keeping up on their promise to write to him. Oh I was happy to listen to him, anything to pass the time so my arms could rest... Needless to say, my 2nd attempt to climb was much less enthusiastic. :)

One last picture before I end this post-not sure which trip this is from, but it`s cool-the image formed by the mountains is like the map of Peru, or so the Peruvians like to believe...

Lima to Huaraz

Has it already been a week in this country? Or should I say has it only been a week? At once it seems like I just got here and also like I´ve been here forever. The concept of time loses all meaning here. Which is just what I needed from my trip...

The above picture is really the only interesting thing I could find in Lima. Yeah, not the most exciting city. Traffic in the big cities are controlled by the police in major intersections. Pedestrians seem like an after thought-no traffic lights for them and the police completely ignores them. You just kind of have to watch the traffic and jump out on the street when you see an opportunity.

I´m travelling with an Israeli girl named Rikki and as she doesn´t speak any Spanish, I´ve become the translator with my pigeon Spanish. I must say though, the first day in Peru made me really proud of myself. It turns out I can understand a whole lot of Spanish and speak enough to get by. Within a few hours of landing I figured out that ¨cuadras¨ are blocks and the address Av. San Juan 2576 means that the place you are looking for is in the 25th block. It may not be much of an achievement if you´re used to this kind of city planning, but I´m not, so let me enjoy my little achievement please. Thank you.

We managed somehow to walk all around Lima and even got on a little ´collectivo´ which is sort of a minibus they stuff as much as they can. More on that when I write about Huaraz and the north. The first collectivo (above) we got on was quite an experience as the guy who hangs out the door and yells the destination to people waiting outside (the picture should be quite familiar to the Turks among you) took quite a fancy to us. He kept muttering all sorts of praises and salacious remarks in Spanish, most of which I didn´t get (probably better that way) and told us when we got off ¨Goodbye babies¨. It was quite hilarious.

Long story short, 1 day after we got to Lima, we made our way to Huaraz, which is the central location in the north where all the beautiful treks are run from. I was a little shocked to see this at the bus terminal:

Horrible picture, but if you look closely you will see the book ¨El Castillo Blanco¨, ie the White Castle, by Orhan Pamuk, the recent Nobel prize winner for literature. Who would have thought...

Having thus been shocked, we got on our 8 hour bus drive to Huaraz which was quite interesting. Vendors kept getting on, selling all sorts of stuff, like blocks of cheese, pastries, corn on the cob (they´re giant and they´re called choclitos, we have to buy some and cook for ourselves) empanadas etc. They would get on and only get off at the next stop. The toilets didn´t work, the movie shown was ridiculously loud, but the scenery was just beautiful. We drove through giant walls of sand on both sides of the bus.

Well I´m being thrown out of the Internet cafe, so will have to continue another time...

Go East...

I know I know... Long time no blog. And so much did happen in that time. Travels to South Africa, Pesach, Yom Haatzmaut... So much to write about and so little time. I should really pick up my story where I left off, but as I sit here in some dark room in a hostel in Huaraz, Peru, all I can think of is the time I am spending in South America and how, if I don´t record it right now, my rapidly disappearing brain cells won´t allow me to do it later. So, with your permission, I will skip over South Africa for the time being-however difficult that will be for me (and certain South Africans among you)-and come back to it at a later date.

Before we set on the road though-I should say a few words about the above picture. This was a really yummy cake that was made for me before I left, by my sister, ever the thoughtful. She wanted to make sure I knew where home is, you see. And so I made sure to eat the¨"E" of the cake... Along with the yummy raspberry and pastry cream filling of course...

On to the trip... At the airport in Israel was a display of a whole series of posters commissioned by the state for the Independence Days of yesteryear. It´s really a cute little exhibit, showing what was on people´s minds at different ages of our nation. I wish I had had more time to look at it. Here´s to hoping they display these somewhere more easily accessible for everyone to see.

I got to Peru after a series of gruelling flights. The first leg, to New York, was at midnight and having slept about 3 hours the previous night, I was thoroughly convinced that I could fall asleep. But the flight gods had different plans... Not one minute of sleep on said flight. I happened to sit next to an Israeli girl who was also flying out to Peru, which in itself isn´t very shocking as far as coincidences go. What was a little eery was that we had the exact same pair of trekking boots on and she also couldn´t sleep a minute of the flight. Anyway. Got off the plane at 4:30 am. Zombie mode. I had 10 hours until my connecting flight so I decided to make it to downtown Manhattan.

It was about 6 am when I got into the city and there were people out and about everywhere. People IN SUITS, WALKING TO WORK, AT 6 AM!!! Do they have nothing better to do with their lives, one would like to know. Apparently some people believe in being a productive member of society. Huh.

After spending some time in the city with a friend, I made it back to Newark and met my travel partner Rikki to fly out to Lima, Peru. By this point I had been awake consecutively for 41 hours. That flight took 7 hours. I actually managed to sleep some of it, but it still took me 2 more days until I adjusted to a normal sleeping pattern. And once I did, we missed no time to mess it up again! We travelled 8 hours this morning on a bus from Lima to come to an amazing part of Peru where the Andes can be seen in all their glory. It is very high here (a whopping 3,090 m.) and we are having a little bit of a problem adjusting. Some dizziness, some nausea and a lot of exhaustion. So as much as I´d love to write about Lima and our trip to Huaraz, I really must go and see about that sleeping pattern... So I leave you now with a teaser picture of the Cordilleras Blanca ("white mountain range") and hope to blog again real soon.

Livin' La Vida Loca...

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. So lest you think I've been idle all this time-here are some pictures from my trip in Istanbul.

I've been partying,














mingling with some wild creatures,















and burning the house down in my spare time!

In short-it's been wild! :P I'm off to South Africa in a few hours. A more serious post to follow at some point...

Turkisms galore...

I haven't managed to blog as much as I wanted-I've been trying to get in as much quality time as possible in Turkey. My time is divided between seeing the people I've missed and soaking up the beauty of Istanbul. So for now I decided to give here a list of the quintessentially Turkish experiences I can't get enough of. First and foremost is obviously the Bosphorous. :)

Then there's my absolute favorite in Istanbul winters-the roasted chestnuts:

and while we're on the subject of street vendors-there's a ridiculous amount of hazelnuts in Istanbul and the government has been trying to promote them like crazy. Booths like the one below have become commonplace in the last few years. Not sure why, I guess there's a surplus? They are so yummy, send them to Israel!!!!

When you're keeping kosher outside of Israel, you resort to eating a lot of salads in restaurants. Foreigners who have come to Istanbul with me can't quite get over the elaborate presentation of even the simplest dishes here:

Back at home the tea pot is the queen of the kitchen, perpetually seated its prime location on top of the stove:

and best of all-the juiciest lemons are here!! Just to put things in perspective-we used the whole bowl below on Friday and I was even sent out to buy more!

Wherever I go I can't seem to get away from food, can I??

Berrrale On The Go

That's right, I've left the homeland for a little get away. Well, not SO little actually. I am currently in Turkey visiting my family and friends and a week from now I plan to be in South Africa! Yay!!! I've wanted to visit Cape Town for many years now and finally I had a wonderful opportunity that I couldn't pass up on. I plan to be there for a few weeks and I am bursting with excitement! (or as we say in Turkish: "My insides don't fit my insides"!)

Of course, me being me, I already have a few baking projects lined up in both countries. Should be fun :)

Say what you will, it is always difficult for me to leave Israel. I feel like a little part of me gets left behind. However frustrated I get with it, it's still my home and I feel a tremendous connection to it. In fact, I feel horrible leaving it at such a bad time, what with all the rockets falling. I love how when there is a war or disturbance going on, Israelis who are travelling abroad flock back to it. We live in a huge pressure cooker, but it's our pressure cooker dammit and we will get in there!

My flight from Tel Aviv was quite uneventful. Unless of course you count the cab driver breaking the handle on my very heavy suitcase... Of course in true Israeli fashion he claimed that I had broken it-never mind that before he touched it, it was working just fine. It was not fun schlepping a 24 kg. suitcase up 2 flights of stairs, I'll tell you that much. Poor little me.

Then there was the security guy at the airport who ran my backpack through the machine twice because apparently mezuzot are a great security risk! Yes, I was asked whether it was indeed mezuzot they saw on their screen after which they let me go. Not quite sure what to make of that.

The other thing I always get a kick out of when I fly abroad is that I get to go to the VIP lounge, courtesy of my old company and their great deals... It gives me so much pleasure to still benefit from these little perks! This is what it looks like:

On the flight itself I really enjoyed the take off and landing cause we were flying at night and I love to watch the city with its flickering lights from the window. It's one of those beautiful sights you just can't capture on camera.

But by far the most amusing part of the trip was my conversation with a Turkish police officer at passport control, it is so bizarre I have to write it out:

Her: So, how does it feel to be married to a foreigner (I'm guessing she didn't notice the name change after the divorce)?

Me: I don't know, I haven't been married to a non foreigner so I can't compare (I really said that!).

Her: Oh, so you're saying there's compatibility (??? don't you love how people pretend to listen to you while they're busy making up their own theories?).

Me: I'd say that as long as they're decent, it doesn't matter where they are from.

Her: Aaaah.

And with that I got my stamp of approval to get into Turkey.

Stay tuned...

Walking The Land

I spent 22 years of my life in a big city, never knowing how much I adored hiking. It didn't help that I lived in a country blessed with an abundance of beauty, excursions in nature was just not high on the list of things to do in Istanbul. I guess because there was so much to be done in the city that it was not a necessity to wander away? It took me coming to tiny little Israel to find out just how much I loved being outdoors. Things may have changed since I left, but I still don't think that Turks have an appreciation of the land like Israelis do. In fact, I find Turks fail to appreciate and properly utilize many of their country's resources, but that's a subject for another post...

These days I try to go on a hike at any opportunity I get. It's such an exhilirating feeling to walk in nature, a real treat for the senses. I have trouble deciding which one I love more sometimes, hiking or baking. All I know is that I refused to give up on either of them last week even though I was feeling a little under the weather, thus ending up spending the last 4 days all couped up in bed. 2 hours of sleep a night cause I was all stuffed up. Hey I have to earn that idiot badge somehow, right?

I joined a group of Anglos to hike in one of the most beautiful spots around Jerusalem called Wadi Qelt. The flowers were in bloom and we had a short, but very pleasurable walk. Here is a picture of the wadi from a distance:

It was after the rains so there was quite a lot of water in the wadi and the random pools along the way:

At some point we came across a mother and baby goat, with some in our group claiming the baby had just been born:

Afterwards we saw a few more goats coming towards us:

And before we knew it we were surrounded by a whole herd passing us by on our right and left.




We came ridiculously close to them as evidenced by this picture:

I was half expecting one of them to turn around and grab my camera to prevent me from intruding on their privacy! Thankfully we managed to move on and we then saw something that made my heart skip a beat:

Yes!!!! That's right!!! It's the adorable, wonderful, one and only-turtle!!!! Or tortoise if you want to be precise. Of course I had to stop and talk to the cute creature and make sure he was ok (he was). I would have taken him home but it's illegal in Israel to keep turtles as pets. Apparently their place is in the wild. So I took millions of pictures instead. :) To be honest, I could have stopped hiking at that point. I had gotten all I wanted (and more!) from my day out. But alas, that was not to be. We had a little more ground to cover:

Just so you can see how clear the water was:


No travel post is complete without a cultural touch-here's someone in our group who decided to make Turkish coffee during one of our 5 minute breaks. I myself am not a fan and would never dream of shlepping a burner for coffee alone, but I admire the people who do. Kudos for making it (almost) the proper way!